This invention relates to apparatus for controllably gripping and rotating apparatus. The invention particularly relates to the controlled closure and opening of screw-cap containers.
A considerable amount of work has been done on equipment for the automatic or remote opening of bottles. A great deal of this art is collected in the United States Patent Office under Art Class 81, subclasses 3.31, 3.32 and 3.33. In general, this art has tended to relate to automatic machinery wherein bottles of the same geometry are manipulated many times. A great deal of work has also been done in developing jar-gripping devices (See for Example, See U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,569,239 and 2,732,740) and other specific apparatus useful in bottle-opening operations.
Despite the earlier work and as will be described in more detail below, the present inventor wished to provide bottle opening apparatus that would be sufficiently versatile and dependable to be generally useful in robotic applications, for example in applications wherein a robot with other duties to perform would also, from time to time, be used in conjunction with the rotary tool of the invention to hold a bottle to be capped, a screw to be inserted into or workpiece, or some other object to be rotated in relation to an object held by the rotary tool.